That said I did get a chance to spend at least one day of the long weekend away from the city for a girls trip to Cambridge for Toni’s birthday. Toni and her two friends Dani and Tara and my friend from home who was visitng Barbs and myself, were all up bright and early on the Saturday morning to get a train out to Cambridge. We arrived by about 11am and soon got stuck into checking out the city. We were lucky that since it was the long weekend there were a few things going on in Cambridge one of which was local markets in one of the town squares. We wandered these and checked out the fresh food, knick knacks and clothes before continuing on through the little streets and via some of the oustide of a few colleges.
As we were perusing the markets we got touted by a student giving us a good deal on a punting trip along the river. After googling Cambridge and talking to a few friends we had realised this was a must do and when we got a good deal it was hard to say no! We set a time and continued to wander the town before grabbing some ciders and snacks and making our way down to the river. We were on a boat with about 6 other people but since there was five of us they put is in the main bit so we were facing each other. We were also treated to a very cute punter (if thats what they are called) so the girls facing the back had a good view!
We set off from the banks and started our tour and it was amazing to see how many people were along the river. Our guide had lived gave us a good commentary and we learnt lots of facts about punting, cambridge and the colleges along the way. We had a few near misses as tehre were many people punting themselves around which looked hard if you weren’t a pro! We also made a few friends along the way - sharing our grapes and carrot sticks with other people in other boats as well as our bread with the local ducks who swam along side the boat quacking for a snack. In fact I can’t belive how fast those little things can swim if it means a crumb of bread - at one stage a whole flock of them flew to us and landed right next to the boat!
Before long our 45 trip was over and we had to get out of the boat much to our dissapointment. We said goodbye to our guide and decided to head to a park along the river to finish our picnic and enjoy the sun. As we walked for about 30 mins (the very very long way) we got to see more of Cambridge but started to get a bit frustrated about the long walk. In the end we managed to find a good spot along the river where we chatted about our travel plans and other gossip in the sun. About 5 minutes later the clouds came over and we had to run for cover as it started to drizzle with rain. As we were walking back in the direction of town we realised we were only about 15 minutes away from where we were punting!
As the weather had taken a turn for the worse we decided to duck into a little cafe and have a cream tea as Cambridge is pretty small and we had done most of what we had wanted to do. We found a cute little cafe on the way back to the train station and treated ourselves to a cup of tea and cake. We then strolled back through the town to the train station and jumped back on the train into town.
Earlier in the day we had spoken about continuing Toni’s birthday out in town with a few bottles of wine at a BYO resturant. By the end of a busy day those plans turned into a lazy movie night in. Since most of my flatties were out of town the girls all came back to mine where we stocked up on wine, pizza, lollies and popcorn and watched movies in a row. Whilst it wasn’t a massive birthday night for Toni I’m pretty sure she had a fun day! I think it was a good end to a busy day!
If you get the change to visit Cambridge I would totally recommend it. Unluckily for us a few of the colleges weren’t open so we didn’t get to go in and visit so i’m thinking I may head back one day. I would love to go back and see it from a students perspective too!
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